Chimpanzee News and Research

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Community-based wildlife mortality surveillance program could help prevent Ebola outbreaks

Human Ebola epidemics, like the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, are known to start from a contact with wildlife infected with Ebola virus. In

29 Aug 2019

Monkey-infecting virus shows promise as potential component of future HIV vaccine

A protein from Simian Immunodeficiency Virus, which can infect monkeys and apes, has shown promise as a potential component of a vaccine against Human Immunodeficiency Virus, in a new study from scientists at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California.

22 May 2019

Groundbreaking research could lead to a simple, inexpensive test for Ebola virus

In a breakthrough that could lead to a simple and inexpensive test for Ebola virus disease, researchers have generated two antibodies to the deadly virus.

7 May 2019

Universal pan-filovirus T-cell vaccine could offer protection against Ebola and Marburg

Vaccines that induce protective T-cell responses could protect against members across the filovirus family, according to a study published February 28 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Tomáš Hanke of the University of Oxford, Bette Korber of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and colleagues.

4 Mar 2019

New study provides insights into developmental organization of the brain

What makes us human, and where does this mysterious property of "humanness" come from? Humans are genetically similar to chimpanzees and bonobos, yet there exist obvious behavioral and cognitive differences.

13 Feb 2019

Human 'common cold' virus continues to spread in wild chimpanzees

Less than two years after the first report of wild chimpanzees in Uganda dying as a result of a human "common cold" virus, a new study has identified two other respiratory viruses of human origin in chimpanzee groups in the same forest.

22 Jan 2019

WRAIR clinical study evaluates safety and immunogenicity of Marburg vaccine

The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research this week administered the first vaccine in a Phase 1 clinical trial to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of a Marburg vaccine candidate in healthy adult volunteers.

15 Oct 2018

Antimicrobial signaling molecule has lower activity against hepatitis C virus in most humans

An antimicrobial signaling molecule called IFNλ4 has lower activity against the hepatitis C virus in the vast majority of humans compared with chimpanzees and African hunter-gatherer Pygmies, according to a study published October 11 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by John McLauchlan’s research team at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research in the UK, and colleagues.

12 Oct 2018

Scientists find wild African monkeys infected with bacterium that causes syphilis, yaws in humans

An international research team, led by scientists from the German Primate Center, the Robert Koch Institute, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, McGill University, Masaryk University, the University of Tübingen and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, has successfully recovered genomes of the bacterium Treponema pallidum, which causes syphilis and yaws in humans, from wild nonhuman primate populations across sub-Saharan Africa.

20 Sep 2018

Researchers may be overlooking complexities in social relations of primates

Anyone who peruses relationship settings on social media knows that our interactions with other humans can be intricate, but a new study in Nature: Scientific Reports suggests that researchers may be overlooking some of these same complexities in the social relations of our closest primate relatives, such as chimpanzees and macaques.

18 Sep 2018

PEACHI project develops vaccine strategies targeting both HIV and hepatitis C virus

An estimated 2.3 million people globally are infected with both human immunodeficiency virus type 1 and hepatitis C virus.

27 Jul 2018

Researchers discover three genes that may have contributed to evolution of large human brain

Three genes involved in nerve cell generation in the brain emerged roughly 3.5 million years ago and may have contributed to the rapid evolution of the large human brain, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator David Haussler and colleagues report on May 31, 2018, in the journal Cell.

1 Jun 2018

Human ‘common cold’ virus kills healthy chimpanzees in Uganda

In the wild, chimpanzees face any number of dire threats, ranging from poachers to predators to deforestation.

13 Dec 2017

CLOCK gene plays key role in regulating many genes important to brain evolution

Scientists have long sought to unravel the molecular mysteries that make the human brain special: What processes drove its evolution through the millennia? Which genes are critical to cognitive development?

6 Dec 2017

Distinct small differences in the human brain may contribute to our cognitive abilities

The most dramatic divergence between humans and other primates can be found in the brain, the primary organ that gives our species its identity.

23 Nov 2017

Penn researchers find evidence of new malaria species in wild bonobos

Malaria parasites, although widespread among wild chimpanzees and gorillas, have not been detected in bonobos, a chimp cousin. Reasoning that previous studies may have missed infected bonobo populations, a team led by Beatrice Hahn, MD, a professor of Microbiology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, conducted a more extensive survey, increasing both the number and places they sampled wild bonobo populations.

21 Nov 2017

Asymmetry in human brains may hold key to how we developed language skills

The pattern of asymmetry in human brains could be a unique feature of our species and may hold the key to explaining how we first developed language ability, experts say.

16 Nov 2017

Humans not as exceptional in using brain power as we like to think

For years, scientists assumed that humans devote a larger share of their daily calories to their brains than other animals. Although the human brain makes up only 2 percent of body weight, it consumes more than 25 percent of our baseline energy budget.

1 Nov 2017

Researchers receive $11.5 million program project grant to eliminate drug resistant malaria

Texas Biomedical Research Institute researchers, Dr. Tim Anderson and Dr. Ian Cheeseman, have partnered with researchers at the University of Notre Dame and the Center for Infectious Disease Research in Seattle to pursue studies in drug resistant malaria.

20 Sep 2017

Study identifies genes that regulate gestational length and likelihood of preterm delivery

The genes that regulate gestational length and the likelihood of preterm delivery, have been identified in a study involving more than 50,000 women. An article in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) describes the scientific breakthrough that can lead to improved health and survival among children.

7 Sep 2017